Alleviating the Stresses of An Expensive College Tuition
by: Claire Bendig
Link: https://b2b.inviteeducation.com/2017/07/07/alleviating-the-stresses-of-an-expensive-college-tuition/
Tuition loans can be a cause of student stress, especially with enough interest accrued to require repayment well into the future. Difficult to evade, only determined hard work will eventually pay them off.
As a college graduate myself, we enter a world of endless responsibilities, unsure of what to do. The debt that is carried over from an undergraduate degree is astronomical. 
According to Student Loan Hero, a blog that guides indebted students, “Americans owe nearly $1.3 trillion in student loan debt, spread out among about 44 million borrowers. In fact, the average Class of 2016 graduate has $37,172 in student loan debt, up six percent from last year.”
There are ways to alleviate the stresses of an expensive tuition. FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is a government form that qualifies students for aid based on their particular financial situation. The problem for many is the tedious application process. It has more than 100 questions, including inquiries about parents’ assets, taxes and net worth.
In March 2016, a group of seven students went to Washington, D.C., to help pass a bill to streamline the FAFSA process. Patrick McDermott was among those who attended. As a student working with college freshmen in dealing with these issues, he says, “The FAFSA process could be made a lot easier by not only implementing the IRS direct transfer as is done now, but by streamlining the amount of information required in determining the monetary awards.” (The IRS Data Retrieval Tool has since faced security issues, causing it to be shut down for now)
Even though the application can be overwhelming for students to fill out, it is well worth the effort to gain access to guaranteed school funding.
Credit unions can help students with financial debt as well (along with other perks like reduced transaction fees, online banking, debit and low-interest rate credit cards). Organizations such as Credit Union Student Choice lay out credit union options for students and mentor them on how loans work and ways to evade interest penalties. When joining a credit union, if the student has a co-signer, they can get a lower interest rate.
In line with their mission to help others, credit union loans will often allow the co-signer to be without obligations if the student has been consistent with payments for the past 12 months. Toni Jaroszewicz, Detroit Branch Manager of Lake Trust Credit Union says, “We offer credit counseling and work with our young folks to help get them on the right track to pay down debt and implement plans that will lead them to financial success.”
Counseling is the educational foundation that is needed to better understand the expectations of the college graduate, and because of the member-status of account holders, credit unions are willing to provide more financial guidance than they are likely to find at banks. My peers and I have graduation fears because so much is unknown. By expanding practical education, we can enter the professional world more confident in our abilities to succeed.
Claire Bendig is a contributor to the Millennial Voice column for CO-OP Financial Services, a financial technology company for 3,500 credit unions and their 60 million members. She is a recent graduate of Chapman University in Orange, California, with an Emphasis in Creative and Technical Writing.
